Constitutional Confusion

In light of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's open derision of the Constitution last week comes this front page New York Times piece entitled, " 'We the People' Loses Appeal With People Around the World."  Adam Liptak, the author of this piece and the Supreme Court Correspondent for the Times, opens with this salvo:

WASHINGTON — The Constitution has seen better days.  Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.

But why would one measure the goodness of the U.S. Constitution by how other countries incorporate it into their own constitutions?

Liptak muses on the reasons for it's waning international influence in a very telling paragraph:

The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige. 

Oh, I see.  It's "old" and "terse" which implicitly means that it must be defective precisely because it's from a past age and reflects past understandings. (Later in the piece, the aptly-named Professor Law says that "no one wants to copy Windows 3.1.") The understanding of "old" is associated with the bad and inferior, a less evolved time.  That must mean that constitutions crafted more recently are automatically superior because of the simple fact that they were crafted closer to the present day.  This is truly the stuff of modern education.

Liptak says that the Constitution "guarantees relatively few rights."  Would freedom of religion or speech exist if it were not explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights?   Do the People hold any other rights than those specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights?  Probably unbeknownst to Liptak is the fact that most of the Founders were originally against the inclusion of a Bill of Rights.  Alexander Hamilton saw that "the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS."  Hamilton and the Founders saw that the Magna Carta and other such contracts between kings and subjects always included a bill of rights.  This always implied that the king held the original grant of power and the rights listed were simply exemptions from that general power.  The Founders did eventually compromise and agreed to include the Bill of Rights but with addition of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments so that the People would not be miseducated about the source of their rights.  The rights described in the Constitution were not just creations of the Constitution, creations of the positive law.  The Constitution was created to better secure the pre-existing natural rights that all persons of the species homo sapiens hold by nature.  Without that understanding, you get pieces like Liptak's.

In Liptak's mind, the blames also lies with the justices on the court who are at least serious about fidelity to the Constitution, e.i., Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, and Alito.  Of course, not being able to tell between the transcendent principles which the Constitution presupposes and the infinite ways those principles manifest themselves makes it doubly hard for Liptak. 

I could go on, but it would take a while to correct all of Liptak's errors.  On that note, I will end with a very prescient thought by Steve Hayward:

Liberals typically erupt in outrage if you suggest they don’t respect or understand the Constitution, let alone defend it.  But then they let slip that in fact they really don’t respect or understand the Constitution.

Amen.